


Voltron Junior

by Stratagem



Series: Lion Cub [12]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Future Shallura kid, Gen, goofing off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 17:43:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10836177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stratagem/pseuds/Stratagem
Summary: Hunk helps Shiro and Allura’s daughter Emi with a homework project on her future career. Lance proposes The Best Job.





	Voltron Junior

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Voltron.
> 
> A/N: ShiroxAllura kid is 6 in this one! And Hunk is the best person to bounce ideas off of.

"What about intergalactic archaeologist with a side of dogsled driver?"

"Yeah! But Mum and Dad said I can't have a dog."

"Oh, right. I strongly disagreed with that decision."

"I know, I remember."

Hunk was laying on his back on the floor of one of the Castle's observation decks, his arms crossed behind his head. Nestled up to him, her back against his side, was Emi. Papers covered with her childish drawings and bits of Hunk's expert engineering art were scattered around the room, and there was a recycling bin full of crumpled up construction paper in the corner.

"I don't want to pick, there's too much to choose from," Emi said for the seventh thousand time. The kid seemed to really hate this project, mainly because she changed what she wanted to be every single day. Or every hour. She dragged her crayon across a paper, putting a massive mark through her current drawing.

"You can always change it later," Hunk said, "It's not as if you have to decide forever what you're going to be when you're six."

"That'd be really bad…"

"No kidding. I would've wound up being a firefighting comic book artist who played electric bass for the Dark Atom Curse. Wait, actually, you know, that wouldn't be that terrible."

Emi was working on an assignment for school: draw a picture of what you want to be when you grow up. Hunk reached over and picked up the paper she had been working on then squinted at her ruined drawing. "You want to be a duck riding a tank?"

The kid had a lot of talents but drawing wasn't one of them.

"It's a picture of a hoverbike!" Emi said, holding her hand out for the paper. "I could be a hoverbike designer."

"What's with the duck?"

"I could raise ducks, too."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "I like ducks, they're weird."

"Remind me to get you a rubber ducky one day." Hunk smiled and handed the paper back to her so she could draw on the back of it. "Maybe you could be a farmer? You could live on Earth or somewhere and grow crops and raise animals and everything."

Emi's dark eyebrows shot up on her forehead. "I don't think so. I killed that singing deyari plant Coran got me real quick, remember?"

"Oh yeah, that thing only lasted about a week. It was a nice funeral, though… So you're not a green thumb."

"I can too have a green thumb." A moment later Emi's hand appeared in his face, complete with a bright green thumb. She gave him a green thumb's up before letting her skin fade back into its normal shade of brown.

Hunk laughed and pushed her hand away. "That's not what I meant. Having a green thumb means you can keep plants alive without a lot of work."

Emi grinned. "Oh, yeeeep, that's not me."

"No kidding, plant murderer," Hunk said. He looked up at the observation window above them and out at the wide expanse of stars. It was easy to understand why she was having a tough time with the assignment, even besides her extreme lack of sketching skills. There were just too many jobs out there in the universe, and then you sometimes had to hold multiple jobs at one time. Like paladin-engineer-voiceofreason-chef… "You're good at dancing and singing. What if you were a performer?" He glanced over at her. "That whole shape-shifting thing would come in handy for that."

"Yeah, guess so." She started drawing again, her colored pencil trailing methodically over the paper. So detail-oriented. For a couple minutes, there was a companionable silence then Emi let out a growl, pushed the paper away, and leapt on Hunk.

"Oof!" Hunk blinked as Emi perched on his chest, sitting cross-legged, elbows on her knees and a frown on her face. "Problem?"

"I don't like lots of people looking at me," she said, "Or talking to me. Or any stuff like that, so I don't want to be a dancer or anything 'cause everyone stares at you."

Oh right, he had sort of forgotten about that. She just didn't seem like a shy kid, at least until you got her around people she didn't know. Allura always said she would grow out of it and embrace her Altean extrovert, super-social, diplomatic ancestral nature, but Hunk didn't think she would ever be as outgoing or as comfortable with crowds as Allura.

"Maybe you shouldn't take it literally," Hunk said.

"What do you mean?"

"Before we have a heart-to-heart, you're literally squashing the air out of my lungs…"

Emi jumped down, her leap almost knocking the air out of him, and Hunk sat up. He grabbed one of the many pieces of paper that were laying around and plucked a pencil from the pile. "C'mere." Taking hold of her leg, he slid her over to his side and handed her a pencil as well. "What're some things you want to be when you grow up?"

She tugged on her long fluffy ponytail and grimaced. "We've been talking about that for a decapheeb."

"No, I mean what do you want to _be_ like." He smiled over at her. "For instance, do you want to be a completely awful person who's selfish and ignorant and goes around insulting people?"

"No!" Emi shook her head emphatically. "But I don't think that's what my teacher meant. She meant jobs."

"Did she specifically say you had to draw about jobs?"

"I can't remember."

"Okay, then we're going to say she didn't and take some artistic liberties. All right, what do you want to be?"

The kid braced her hands against the floor and waved her bare feet back and forth as she thought. "I want to be nice. And smart. And brave?"

Hunk wrote those things down on the paper, starring each one. "I think you'll be resourceful."

"What's that?"

"It means you'll be really clever and figure out smart ways to fix your problems."

"Yeah, that, I want to be that!"

They listed a few more things, and then Emi started drawing pictures that may or may not have represented each word accurately. Hunk went back to stargazing and she started using him as a backrest again. Overhead, the stars spun slowly as the Castle rotated in space. They were in orbit around a small little planet that had requested some help with their polar ice caps melting. See, that ice-beam thing that Blue had sure came in handy.

Speaking of Blue… "What're you guys doing?" Lance stepped into the room, wearing sweatpants and a hoodie and two-day-old stubble on his face. There were bags under his eyes, and he looked exhausted, probably because he had been pulling ridiculously long days in an effort to temporarily fix the ice caps while the planet's inhabitants, along with a group of scientists from around the universe, tried to come up with a more permanent solution.

"Homework," Hunk said, earning a surprised-disgusted look from Lance.

"What, why?" He walked over and sat down across from Emi. "You're like two, how do you have homework?"

"I'm six," Emi said, "And my teacher wants us to be good students and think about stuff."

"And are you pondering the deep secrets of the universe?" Lance grinned and poked her in the shoulder. "What's the answer to life, the universe, and everything? Tell me, oh wise infant."

Emi stuck her tongue out at him. "Forty-two."

"Pidge told her," Hunk said when Lance just stared at her.

"Pidge knows everything," Emi said solemnly.

"That's just what she wants you to think," Lance protested.

Hunk pointed at the paper Emi was drawing on. "Emi's working on a drawing of what she wants to be when she grows up. But we decided to go in a different direction."

"Why is this even a question? You can just be a paladin when you grow up," Lance said. He spun her paper around, flipped it to the back, and began sketching a picture of Emi in a paladin's armor.

"But there's only five lions," she protested, reaching for the paper. He moved it to the left and then to right as she tried to grab for it. "I can't be a paladin."

"That's where you're wrong," Lance said, smirking playfully. Hunk could tell he was teasing the kid, but she didn't seem to pick up on it immediately. "Your dad is just shy of being labeled an old fart, so Black will need a new paladin soon. Once Black decides to send Shiro out to the retired paladin pasture, you can pilot the Black Lion! See, works out great." His tired eyes lit up with the creative energy that only appears when one is about to fall over from exhaustion, and he started on a new sketch, stealing another piece of paper. "Or, I got it, we can build a new Voltron! A smaller one, not as cool, but still good, and that's the one you can lead! We'll call it Voltron Junior. Instead of lions we can use robot house cats! It'll need new colors. Better colors! What do you think of being the Wild Blue Yonder Paladin, Pipsqueak?"

"Wild Blue Yonder...?" Hunk said, raising an eyebrow at Lance.

"I saw it on a Crayola crayon once, and you're just jealous that you didn't come up with Voltron Junior."

Emi tilted her head to the side. "Do I have to be blue?"

"Okay, fine, be the Black with Glitzy Gold Glitter Paladin. But no Strawberry!"

"Go to bed, Lance."


End file.
